Having experienced this twice in the past year I wondered just how common it is for apparently healthy rats to suffer presumably heart failure without warning.

In my case both rats were brothers from a reputable breeder, who reported that a third rat from the same litter died in the same way so for me it probably was a genetic issue. To give an idea of the unexpectedness, I said goodbye to the rats as I was about to leave for the evening and he wasn't in the slightest subdued, within half an hour my mum was calling me in a panic telling me he had passed away

I would imagine that it's actually more common among pet shop rats and rescues, but I just got to wondering how many of us had experienced this, how regularly, and the background of the rats it happened to.

I've never had it happen so far (27 rats dead, another 10 still alive, all petshop or rescue), although one boy did die under anaesthetic which might indicate a weak heart, although it may also have been accidental (his brother never had problems).

We've lost a few to heart failure. They generally started by showing respiratory type symptoms and then went into sudden heart failure. One in particular was very sudden with no prior symptoms. We'd only had him a week and he was just a baby when he had a massive heartattack and died in my arms

I havent had masses of rats, but lost 2 to sudden death, one was a bit of a lardball (also my heart rat) so possibly that contributed to it, the other 9 months old, and fit and healthy.
I dont think there are any 'less bad' ways of losing a rat, but sudden death is really horrible, losing Pinch was deeply shocking. I even tried to resuscitate him.

One of my regular ratty customers at work had four rats, two of which I ended up bonding with after treating them for respiratory infections before they went to their new homes. Apart from these two, the other two rats were both acquired separately afterwards, intro'd properly and were pretty healthy and happy up until they reached about 7 months old or so. One day, their owners (a mother and her 13 year old son) came into work and told me that Womble (one of the ones I'd been treating) and Whiskey (one of the later ones) were both dead, and Bandit (the other one I'd been treating) was dying. The remaining one was okay, still relatively healthy and up and wondering about. Their cage of girls was fine, and they still don't know what happened. They said they were all fine when they went shopping, but when they got back and hour and a half later, absolute carnage had ensued.

What was interesting though was that Womble's body was just lying there, untouched, but Whiskey's stomach had been completely torn open. There wasn't any blood, so it must have happened after he died, but Bandit had blood all around his muzzle. I had absolutely no idea what could possibly have happened, since they were quite young, and I've never heard of rats mutilating one another so badly before. Anybody know what might have happened?

oh, sudden adult death is something I did some nosying into a few months back. Personal observation suggests some families are very prone to it and others not at all. I've got a book somewhere that collected like 30 years of non-experimented lab rat data to show the norm for the strain - they had something like 10% die under 1 year old! That shocked me, although I don't know how many of them were really sudden compared to what we observe as pet owners.

The family I'm doing the reasearch for has had something like 3 sudden deaths in 115 or so rats, so doing better than lab rats. I suspect in that case it's related to a low-penetrance heart condition ... but hard to say anything that's not a wild stab in the dark yet.

Yep have had it happen a few times over the years and it's always disturbing.

Most recent was my housemates boy, over two years old, bit of mild hld starting but that was it... night-time fine and happy and still able to climb... morning dead in cage and yep, he was "cleaned up" too...

Owned by the Fuzzy Hoards, Now and Always. Nothing really dies as long as it's not forgotten. All my fur-babies at the bridge... play hard and be happy.